Brian Henderson (26 March 1936 – 20 August 2017) was an English solid-state

spectroscopic Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectra. In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectrosc ...

physicist whose career included spells at

Atomic Energy Research Establishment The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), also known as Harwell Laboratory, was the main Headquarters, centre for nuclear power, atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from 1946 to the 1990s. It was created, owned ...

(AERE),

Keele University Keele University is a Public university#United Kingdom, public research university in Keele, approximately from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as the University College of North Staffordshire, it was granted uni ...

Trinity College Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Unive ...

(TCD), and the

University of Strathclyde The University of Strathclyde () is a public research university located in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1796 as the Andersonian Institute, it is Glasgow's second-oldest university, having received its royal charter in 1964 as the first techn ...

Life and career

Brian Henderson was born near

Doncaster Doncaster ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England. Named after the River Don, Yorkshire, River Don, it is the administrative centre of the City of Doncaster metropolitan borough, and is the second largest se ...

, and was educated at Maltby Grammar School, then in the

West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire was one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the riding was an administrative county named County of York, West Riding. The Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, lieu ...

. He attended the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

, obtaining his BSc (in physical

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...

) in 1958 and PhD in 1960 with a thesis on "The Lattice Spacings of Alloys with Reference to Electronic Constitution".Professor Brian Henderson FRSE
The Royal Society of Edinburgh He became senior scientific officer at the Basic Ceramics Group at AERE (Harwell) in 1962, and joined the staff at Keele University in 1968, being promoted to Reader in Physics there in 1972. Upon the retirement of Nobel laureate

Ernest Walton Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton (6 October 1903 – 25 June 1995) was an Irish nuclear physicist who shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Cockcroft "for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerate ...

from TCD in 1974, Henderson moved to Ireland and became

Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin is a chair in physics founded in 1724 and funded by the Erasmus Smith Trust, which was established by Erasmus Smith, a wealthy London merchant, who liv ...

, a position he held for 10 years. TCD elected him a Fellow in 1976, and awarded him an honorary ScD in 1979. (In 1999, long after he had left TCD, he was awarded an honorary Fellowship there.) Henderson moved back to the UK in 1984, becoming Freeland Professor of Natural Philosophy at Strathclyde University in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

. He later served as Dean of Science and university vice-principal, but retired from there due to ill health in 1997. He had been elected a fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

in 1986. Henderson wrote over 200 papers, authored or co-authored 4 books, and had thirty PhD students. The

International Medical University The IMU University, (formerly known as the International Medical University) is a private, English language, health sciences university in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The university offers programmes in medical and other health sciences as well as ...

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

awarded him an honorary DSc in 2006.

Selected books

* ''Crystal-Field Engineering of Solid-State Laser Materials'', by Brian Henderson & Ralph H. Bartram (Cambridge University Press, 2005) *
Optical Spectroscopy of Inorganic Solids
', by Brian Henderson & George F. Imbusch (Clarendon, 1989)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Henderson, Brian Academics of Trinity College Dublin Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Fellows of Trinity College Dublin English mathematicians 1936 births 2017 deaths